


Bittersweet

by Lunarium



Category: A Redtail's Dream (Webcomic)
Genre: 5 Times, Community: picfor1000, F/F, M/M, SSSS crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 13:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10022828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/pseuds/Lunarium
Summary: Five times their kisses were sweet as chocolate, and one time it turned bittersweet.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for PicFor1000 challenge. Challenge was that we get a picture and our fic has to be exactly 1,000 words long. [My photo prompt](https://www.flickr.com/photos/98474349@N00/6162526003/).

The first kiss was as sweet as white chocolate, all cheek against cheek, barely any lips. Riikka was too small, too chubby. Too inexperienced. They both were, being children. But giggles abound. Then came the shoves and teasings from Joona her twin brother. But the girls were clever, and with Riikka’s own ally Anssi, who held back Joona with a rescuing kiss of his own to buy them time, the two scuttled away from the park in a mad flurry of giggles.

*

The second kiss was brief, the sweetness a hint behind the shyness, like milk chocolate, Riikka decided. They were growing and they were learning, and what Riikka learned was that she really liked Jonna Kuikka, bottom third of her class (would be top if she only took grades more seriously, Riikka always said.)

They shared their lunches, shared stories, shared shirts during gym classes, and shared kisses. For the school dance, they shared the first and last dance. 

The kiss came afterwards, sweet and innocent, hidden from sight of all. Riikka was scared, concerned about being discovered and what the ensuing teasing would be like. But Jonna was grinning, and her confidence made Riikka so happy she no longer cared what anyone would think. When the dance ended, Jonna gave her all of the remaining pastries from her father’s bakery.

*

The kiss came with the bursting taste of strawberries from Riikka’s chapstick, reminding Jonna of the springtime she almost forgot by falling into her girlfriend’s charms. Joy and merriment abound in her kiss, filled with the dreamy idealistic hopes and aspirations of the teenage girls. They were on the very steps of adulthood, and what better than hand in hand, as they stepped into the early days of maturity together?

A bird flitted by, its song sweet melody in their ears. 

It was going to be such a bright and beautiful spring ahead.

*

Something in the kiss was a little nutty, just as Jonna was, the laughing playful young woman for whom which something of her youth still clung to her. Even with all the mounting responsibilities on her shoulders, the kiss with the bubbling laugh right behind it was enough to break the humdrum spell of daily life and remind Riikka why they had fallen in love in the first place.

And why they were here, having met up before the Kuikka Bakery. 

“Tomorrow night’s the grand show in the skies! Don’t let Paju catch you unprepared!” Jonna teased before derailing their romantic moment into a slew of imitations of their mutual neurotic friend. 

Riikka sighed and collected the bowls off the shelf, thanked Jonna, and left. Back to daily life, soundtracked by the angry demands of one Paju Kinnunen, she went.

*

Kisses like dark chocolate and salted caramel warmed them that cold night. The peculiarity of the night before, of the strange _dream_ , if one could call it that, haunted them still like an endless fog.

In one another’s arms there was comfort, a familiarity they could sink themselves in to rid themselves of the strangeness seeping into their world. Night after night they began to seek this, greeting the following day and the tasks as though nothing of that night had haunted them. As if the arrival of their mutual friend’s visitor and the night said friend’s dog disappeared had nothing to add to the sudden strangeness of their changing world. 

Each night Jonna’s dreams took her down stranger paths. 

But even in dreams she was not without friends. Joona resided in his own little haven beside her, with a little bridge between them. Fitting, Jonna thought, what with them being twins. He did not ask prying questions about herself and Riikka, and she did not ask about him and Anssi in return. Where they joked and pranked while awake during the day, here they sat in silent companionship at night and waited in trepidation, for what neither knew.

*

The kiss was bittersweet, salted by her tears slipping into their pressed lips. Jonna had to mentally kick herself away from the thought of the homes both had to leave behind, of the bakery she would never step inside again, the embraces she and Joona gave their father and Oona before parting ways, and of the tears trickling down their faces like the rain falling onto the soil as they made way to the safety of Åsa’s ship.

Behind Riikka’s shoulder, Joona embraced Anssi with more tenderness than Jonna had ever recalled her twin showing his boyfriend before. Though Anssi’s face was turned away from her, his shoulders remained clenched and stressed. Not even being out on the water, where he belonged, away from the crumbling civilization, would calm him. 

No one had anticipated what had begun as an epidemic, so far from home, would strike here, take friends, infect their own loved ones, force them apart and to abandon their homes forever. 

Jonna’s strong embrace kept Riikka rooted in her place as she silently thanked what deity was listening that the strange disease had not found its way to her. 

They slept restlessly that night, crammed together in the cabin like sardines. In happier times they would sail on without sleep, too eager to tell scary tales as the waves rocked their ship. Tonight she held Riikka in her arms as her vivid dreams, which were getting stranger and stranger still, took her down roads painfully familiar and eerily unfamiliar both. After some time, she located the village of Hokanniemi. 

The disease left mercy for none. Paju, Hannu, and Ville remained, battling as best as they could, but she knew they too would turn tail eventually. Or the boys would stubbornly stay beside their friend as her skin took on more of the horrifying blisters of the disease each day. Jonna returned back to her only home, then stopped, mulling things over in her mind a bit, changed course and made back for the ship. 

A singular black ship sailed across a dead white sea.


End file.
